Against Caledonian Capitalism

The Socialist Party has often been accused of being aloof to workers' struggles but on the contrary we do not stand aside from the struggles of nationalism. These struggles are a potent force for the delusion of workers, for the promotion of divisive, anti-working class theories, for the diversion from the essential object of the establishment of socialism. So we cannot stand aside from them; we must expose their basic fallacy, we must be unrelentingly hostile to them and we must strive to replace their theories with the idea of the united, co-operative world of socialism.  It will be a society in which all human beings will be together in the single aim of making life as abundant, free and pleasurable as possible. There will be one people, working together for one object. In socialism the national divisions of capitalism will fade away into a distant memory.

The nationalist argument, as propounded by the SNP in Scotland, is quite simplistic. The people of Scotland, they say, suffer because they are misgoverned from England; what they need is an independent State of their own so that they could begin to solve their problems.  In fact, the problems faced by workers in Scotland are basically the same as those in any other country; they are caused by international capitalism A sovereign Scotland will remain dependent upon the whims of those who own the wealth. and whose interests whatever government is pledged to defend. The Scottish capitalists and their SNP servants will try to sway us one way or another with crumbs or the promises of crumbs but we’ll only receive what they feel they need to spare to protect their privilege and wealth.  The Scottish elite has got behind nationalism and the independence movement, disguising (as it always does) its own interests in the language of idealism. Yet the reality as explained by Edinburgh University's School of Business' Professor MacKay who said that his research suggested that business attitudes towards independence tended to be dictated by where their customers were primarily located. It's buses, hotels and betting shops versus international banks and mining companies. Consumer goods industries v producer goods industries. Big capitalists v smaller capitalists. Marx's Dept I v Dept II. Some choice. The majority of the Scottish people will find little difference under Holyrood than under Westminster and it could be worse if a global crisis erupts again. Scotland as a small economy, dependent on multinationals for investment, still dominated by British banks and the City of London and without control of its own currency or interest rates, could face a much bigger hit than elsewhere in terms of incomes and unemployment.

So independence would not bring dramatic economic improvement to the majority of Scots; indeed, it could mean a worse situation. In an independent Scotland, the City and the architects of the cuts would have more power over Scotland, not less. If Scots want to tame international capitalism, it can only be done internationally. They have to make links, not break links, with other people in other countries, like England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, who agree with them. The struggle of the workers of the United Kingdom must be a united one. The workers are under the domination of a class who rule by the use of a political machine which is the chief governing instrument for England, Scotland, and Wales. To appeal to the workers of Scotland for a Scottish Workers' Republic as the Left-nationalists do is to arouse and foster the narrow spirit of nationalism, so well used by our masters. Independence simply means a transfer of power to a new group of politicians, while the structure of state and society is but little changed. Foolishly, both the Brexit voter and the Scot Nat fanatically believe that Paradise awaits them. 

capitalism is necessarily a competitive system for profits and that states are and have to be, just as much involved in this as capitalist enterprises. Capitalism is a system of competitive accumulation based on wage labour, and these two defining aspects also point to the reason for the persistence of the state's system: on the one hand, the need for capitals to be territorially aggregated for competitive purposes; on the other, the need for that territory to have an ideological basis – nationalism – that can be used to bind the working class to the state and hence to capital.  Nationalism is a product of capitalism,

Edinburgh-born James Connolly tried to stand with a foot in both the socialist and nationalist camps simultaneously. Like the left nationalists of today, he hoped that the bulk of nationalist supporters would learn in the course of the independence struggle to throw in their lot with the socialist movement. Unfortunately, that was not to be, as the siren call of the national patriot proved stronger than the appeal to class solidarity. The Socialist Party rejects nationalism as an anti-working class because it has always tied the working people to its class enemy and divided it amongst itself. Independence has not benefited the working class of Ireland. It has not freed them from wage slavery. It has not freed them from exploitation and inequality. The Irish economy is not run on behalf of the people who live in Ireland, but on behalf of the owners of capital. For all the state intervention, it is still subject to the anarchy of production and the vagaries of the market. Ireland is enmeshed in a worldwide capitalist system, and only by joining a general struggle to emancipate the working class of the whole world, and turn the planet into the common property of humanity will people in Ireland or Scotland liberate themselves.

Ultimately can only be solved by world socialism. Socialists reject allegiance to any State and regard ourselves as citizens of the world. We accept the boundaries between States as they are (and as they may change) and work within them to win control of each State with a view to abolishing them all. Our aim is the establishment of a world community without frontiers based on a cooperative commonwealth, sharing ownership of the world's resources. The only way to end nationalism is for us to take ownership and control of the wealth into our own hands.  We could use the wealth to meet our mutual needs and grant the true independence of being able to control our work and our lives in a free and voluntary association of equals. The message of socialism is worldwide. It reaches across the artificial national boundaries erected by mankind.

In this general election, we have adopted the only possible socialist policy when we have no Socialist Party candidate to vote for - casting a write-in vote for world socialism.  If you want to register your rejection of both SNP nationalism and British unionism in favour of World Socialism, we suggest you don't abstain but go to the polling booths and write the words "WORLD SOCIALISM" across your ballot papers. The real issue is that of rallying the workers to something which will hold their allegiance against all spurious appeals and hold it for all time. Only socialism can do that. Only socialism is worth struggling for. The job of socialists at all times is to propagate the case for socialism